A New Museum Debuts with a Collection of Louis Comfort Tiffany's Works | BLOUIN ARTINFO A New Museum Debuts with a Collection of Louis Comfort Tiffany's Works BY Chloe Wyma | September 12, 2013 Group of Louis Comfort Tiffany lamps (bird's eye-detail). (Photo by John Faier © The Richard H. Driehaus Museum) On September 28, Chicago’s Driehaus Museum will ring in its inaugural exhibition with a show of art nouveau treasures by American decorative artist Louis Comfort Tiffany . " Louis Comfort Tiffany : Treasures from the Driehaus Collection" contains 60 examples of his famous favrile stained-glass windows, iridescent vases, and — of course — lamps ensconced in the exquisitely restored Samuel M. Nickerson House, a historic Gilded Age mansion in Near North Side. Built in 1879 for Chicago banker Samuel M. Nickerson, the Italianate manor was restored and converted into museum in 2008 by businessman, art collector, and philanthropist Richard Driehaus.

Since acquiring his first Tiffany piece — a stained-glass window — in 1978, Driehaus has collected over 1,500 Tiffany works. For the exhibition, curator David A. Hanks distilled this encyclopedic collection down to the crème de la crème. Highlights include an elegant, curvilinear flowerform vase, an opalescent dragonfly lamp, and a vase painted with water lilies, all dating from the first decade of the twentieth century. Tiffany’s variegated glass creations might seem quaint today, but his work was in step with the incipient Modernism at the turn of the century. The son of renowned jeweler Charles Lewis Tiffany, Tiffany the younger defected from the family business to pursue painting. He railed against the conservatism of the National Academy of Design — co-founding the American Art Association (later renamed the Society of American Artists), an avant-garde organization that advocated for the adoption of European-style modernism. He turned his attention to decorative arts in the late 1870’s, working in all manner of media including mosaics, lighting, pottery, enamels, jewelry, and interiors.

With his eclectic brew of influences including Byzantine mosaics, medieval stained glass, Japanese wallpaper, and post-Impressionist abstraction, Tiffany was America’s answer to French art nouveau and to England’s Arts and Crafts Movement. With the emergence of the angular avant-gardism of Cubism and geometric abstraction, Tiffany’s vegetal, voluptuous decorative idiom became an artifact of an effete Victorian past. Tiffany Studios filed for bankruptcy in 1932, a year before his death. Promiscuous reproduction and imitation exiled Tiffany’s work to the provinces of doily-clad tabletop kitsch. Viewed in the context the Driehaus Museum’s art nouveau interiors, Tiffany may once again regain his relevancy. Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848–1933) | Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848–1933) See works of art Works of Art (20) Essay One of America’s most acclaimed artists, Louis Comfort Tiffany’s career spanned from the 1870s through the 1920s.

He embraced virtually every artistic and decorative medium, designing and directing his studios to produce leaded-glass windows, mosaics, lighting, glass, pottery, metalwork, enamels, jewelry, and interiors. As the son of Charles Lewis Tiffany (1812–1902), founder of Tiffany & Company, the fancy goods store that became the renowned jewelry and silver firm, Tiffany chose to pursue his own artistic interests in lieu of joining the family business. Tiffany began his career as a painter, working under the influence of such artists as George Inness (1825–1894) and Samuel Colman (1832–1920). Possessing financial means, he traveled extensively through Europe, North America, and—in 1870–71, with painter Robert Swain Gifford (1840–1905)—North Africa, where he derived inspiration for Snake Charmer at Tangier, Africa ( 21.170 ). Completed in 1872 and exhibited at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, the painting shows Tiffany’s penchant for exotic art and architecture.

Beginning in the late 1870s, Tiffany turned his attention to decorative arts and interiors, although he never abandoned painting. His first significant interior design project was for his 1878 top-floor home and studio at the Bella Apartments on 48 East 26th Street in New York City. The leaded-glass window from the entrance hall ( 2002.474 ), one of his earliest windows, illustrates an unconventional use of glass, including experimental opalescent, marbleized, and confetti-type glass, as well as crown glass and rough-cut “jewels.” This glass fashioned a window of strikingly abstract design suggestive of a bold paintbrush stroke. A few years later, Tiffany’s father commissioned McKim, Mead & White to construct a picturesque Romanesque Revival multifamily dwelling on the northwest corner of 72nd Street and Madison Avenue in New York. Completed in 1885, Louis Tiffany and his family occupied the top two floors. His exotic studio, the site of artistic creations and social gatherings, was a frequently photographed space.

A pastel rendering ( 2003.606 ) of his second wife, Louise, in a corner of the studio demonstrates Tiffany’s deft hand in this difficult medium as he translated and differentiated various lush fabrics and textures. Tiffany and Colman (by this point a business associate) worked together to design the furnishings and interiors for the New York mansion (completed in 1892) of Louisine and Henry Osborne Havemeyer, Tiffany’s most ardent patrons. As part of the interior design, all surfaces in the house were treated and the decoration blended various styles. The library, also called the Rembrandt Room, was Celtic-inspired, as illustrated by the armchair from this space ( 1992.125 ). The form of the chair recalls Viking precedents, and the carved interlace presents Celtic motifs. Tiffany designed private interiors and public spaces for numerous clients. For the widow of Henry Field, brother of Chicago merchant Marshall Field, Tiffany designed a gallery (that no longer survives) for the Art Institute of Chicago.

An existing design drawing ( 67.654.4 ) illustrates the south wall of the gallery: a fireplace, with mosaic above and on the sides, is flanked by ebony pilasters surrounded by green walls. This is one of an extensive collection of Tiffany design drawings in the Museum’s collection. By late 1892 or early 1893, Tiffany built a glasshouse in Corona, Queens, New York, and, with Arthur Nash, a skilled glassworker from Stourbridge, England, his furnaces developed a method whereby different colors were blended together in the molten state, achieving subtle effects of shading and texture. Recalling the Old English word fabrile (hand-wrought), Tiffany named the blown glass from his furnaces Favrile, a trademark that signified glass of hand-made and unique quality. In 1896, the Museum received fifty-six blown vases and roundels from H. O. Havemeyer, one of the first collectors of Favrile glass ( 96.17.10 ). Almost thirty years later, Tiffany loaned to the Museum twenty-seven pieces from his own collection, representing a wider range of production techniques and more developed styles of glass.

One of these new techniques produced glass that resembled Lava or “volcanic” glass ( 51.121.13 ), with broad areas of gold luster meant to mimic hot molten rock spilling from the mouth of a volcano. The rough, black areas were made by introducing bits of basalt or talc into the molten glass formed into vases in organic, irregular shapes. Of all of Tiffany’s artistic endeavors, leaded-glass brought him the greatest recognition. Tiffany and his early rival, John La Farge, revolutionized the look of stained glass, which had remained essentially unchanged since medieval times when craftsmen utilized flat panes of white and colored glass with details painted with glass paints before firing and leading. Tiffany and La Farge experimented with new types of glass and achieved a more varied palette with richer hues and greater density. By 1881, each had patented an opalescent glass, a unique American phenomenon that featured a milky, opaque, and sometimes rainbow-hued appearance with the introduction of light.

Internally colored with variegated shades of the same or different hues, Tiffany’s Favrile glass enabled craftsmen to substitute random tonal gradations, lines, textures, and densities inherent in the material itself for pictorial details. Magnolias and Irises ( 1981.159 ), executed by Tiffany Studios around 1908, was designed as a memorial window based on a well-known motif—the River of Life. It depicts magnolias composed of opalescent drapery glass, heavily folded or creased glass, and iris in multihued tones illustrating Tiffany’s ability to “paint” with glass. Growing out of an interest in interior decorating, Tiffany and his studios turned toward another venture in 1898—lighting and lamps. Although Tiffany’s craftsmen used patterns to make lampshades, each was unique due to the selection of the individual pieces of glass with their varied colors and densities.

A water lily lamp ( 1974.214.15a, b ), with its organic bronze support composed of lily pads, is crowned by a shade featuring pink opalescent stems that terminate in creamy water lily blossoms against a background of rippled blue glass, evocative of a bog where water lilies dwell. Mosaics were also a natural progression and extension of Tiffany’s work in Favrile and leaded glass. Glass mosaics were used in interior settings, initially for church interiors and fireplace surrounds, but then developed into full artistic works. Inspired by Byzantine churches Tiffany surveyed on his European travels that used flat, solid-color squares, or tesserae, he improved upon the tradition by incorporating innovative techniques of modeling and shading to produce a wide range of colors within glass. Glass was also cut into different shapes to enhance pictorial qualities. Garden Landscape and Fountain ( 1976.105 ) is a tour de force of mosaic work, with its subtle color shading, textured glass, and uniquely cut pieces set in a challenging pictorial composition.

In 1899, Tiffany introduced enamelwork in London, where he exhibited plaques and vases made in the firm’s unique style. Layers of translucent enamel in wide-ranging naturalistically shaded hues were applied to a luminous surface that was usually gilt, and finished with an iridescent coating that provided a rainbow luster. One of fifteen enamelworks that Tiffany lent to the Museum in 1925 ( 51.121.29 ) shows bold repoussé in plump purple plums and translucent green foliage that envelop the large round bowl, echoing the shape of a plum. A drawing recently donated to the Museum ( 2005.495 ) depicts the enamel bowl with its ripening plums and sinewy branches. A few years after mastering enamelwork, Tiffany launched a pottery studio, capitalizing on the extraordinary popularity of American ceramic vessels at the turn of the century. His designs were inspired by contemporary European, particularly French, ceramics , exceptional examples of which he had seen on trips to Paris.

The shape of the Museum’s small symmetrical vase is Chinese-inspired ( 51.121.21 ), with sophisticated red, dark green, and yellow glazes that recall those of the French ceramicist Pierre-Adriene Dalpayrat (1844–1910), whose work Tiffany admired. Tiffany was knowledgeable about jewelry trends through art periodicals, international expositions, and, of course, his father’s firm, Tiffany & Company—to which he was appointed art director upon his father’s death in 1902. His earliest jewelry designs were exhibited at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in Saint Louis. In addition to enamels, Favrile glass vessels, and pottery, Tiffany’s jewelry garnered attention and favorable press by the art critics of the period. An interest in nature, use of semiprecious stones with enamel, and handcraftsmanship elevate his unusual jewelry to the status of art ( 2002.620 ). At about the same time, Tiffany was completing his Long Island country home, Laurelton Hall.

Built at the height of his career, between 1902 and 1905, the eighty-four-room, eight-level estate was situated on nearly 600 acres overlooking Cold Spring Harbor in Oyster Bay, New York. A showcase for his unique integration of nature and exoticism, Laurelton Hall was the ultimate expression of Tiffany’s aesthetic ideals, envisioned as a total work of art. This was his dream home, where creativity flowed freely and convention was eschewed in place of novelty. Now sadly destroyed, remnants of the estate are preserved in museum collections. The four-columned loggia that currently graces The Charles Engelhard Court of the Museum’s American Wing ( 1978.10.1 ) was originally installed on the south side of Laurelton Hall. Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen The American Wing, The Metropolitan Museum of Art July 2007 Citation Frelinghuysen, Alice Cooney, and Monica Obniski. “Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848–1933).” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–.

(July 2007) Further Reading Eidelberg, Martin, et al. The Lamps of Louis Comfort Tiffany. London: Thames & Hudson, 2005. Frelinghuysen, Alice Cooney. Louis Comfort Tiffany and Laurelton Hall: An Artist's Country Estate. Exhibition catalogue. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2006. See on MetPublications Frelinghuysen, Alice Cooney. "Louis Comfort Tiffany at the Metropolitan Museum." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 56 (Summer 1998). See on MetPublications McKean, Hugh F. The "Lost" Treasures of Louis Comfort Tiffany. Atglen, Pa.: Schiffer, 2002. Zapata, Janet. The Jewelry and Enamels of Louis Comfort Tiffany. New York: Abrams, 1993. Additional Essays by Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen Munger, Jeffrey, and Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen. “ East and West: Chinese Export Porcelain .” (October 2003) Veith, Barbara, and Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen.

“ Women China Decorators .” (April 2013) Additional Essays by Monica Obniski Louis Comfort Tiffany - Decorative Artists - Artist Biographies - Macklowe Gallery Louis Comfort Tiffany 1837 - 1933 Louis Comfort Tiffany was a Renaissance man during a period of history known as the Gilded Age. As an artist of many media and decorative arts , his lengthy career, from the 1870's to the mid-1920's, spanned and shaped several design periods during a time of "experimentation, intense scrutiny of aesthetic ideals, and proliferation of new styles in the world of art." Throughout his career, he forged a unique style that combined superb craftsmanship with a love of natural forms and brilliant color. His luminous glass designs combined technical innovations with the highest artistry infusing everyday objects with beauty inspired by nature. Born in New York City, Louis Comfort Tiffany was the eldest son of Charles Lewis Tiffany, who had founded Tiffany & Co in 1837. Raised in an atmosphere of tremendous wealth and expensive taste, Tiffany was a natural aesthete, and opted against joining his father's company in favor of studying the fine arts.

Tiffany continued to paint, but he made his mark in the decorative arena. There was hardly a medium to which he did not turn, including furniture , metalwork, textiles, pottery, enamels, jewelry , and book design. He became interested in the decorative possibilities of glass in the late 1870s and employed it throughout his career. Tiffany participated in the Aesthetic Movement, which conferred a new, higher status to the decorative arts. Like other members of the movement, he drew upon historical sources and was attracted to the arts of such exotic places as China, Japan, ancient Greece, Egypt, Venice, India, and the Islamic world. Tiffany likewise responded to the tenets of contemporary British reform movements, emulating the practices of British designer William Morris, and appreciated the fine craftsmanship championed by the Arts and Crafts Movement. Tiffany's many travels to Europe and the Near East were influential in his choices as a glassmaker. He was especially inspired by Gothic stained glass windows, Persian glass, English cameo , the idea of imitating in glass natural stones such as agate, and the iridescence found in excavated ancient Syrian and Roman glass.

Tiffany was critical of the contemporary practice of painting on glass, which he felt obscured the innate qualities of glass. He sought to maximize the potential of the medium itself, developing new methods resulting in iridescent finishes, lava glass, and his most important innovation, Favrile glass. Favrile glass — a term Tiffany invented from the Latin fabrilis, meaning handmade — is produced by exposing molten glass to a series of vapors and metallic oxides that infuse it with radiant colors and iridescence. The name, as it applied to his own product, was trademarked in 1894. By this point, Tiffany had opened a new glass factory in Corona, Queens, and had begun marketing his Favrile windows, lamps , vases and mosaics in America and in Europe. In 1878, Tiffany designed his first interior —for his own home in the Bella Apartments at 48 East Twenty-sixth Street, where he lived with his wife and three children.

Hardly a surface was left plain: Oriental rugs were scattered across floors; Japanese patterned papers were affixed to walls and ceilings; carved and painted woodwork from India served as architectural embellishment for windows; colored and leaded glass filled window openings; and pictures and objects of various styles and media, including pottery, porcelain , and metalwork from China and Japan, were arranged throughout. Much of the furniture was remarkably simple, a foil for the proliferation of ornament. Louis C. Tiffany and Associated Artists was founded in 1879, the first of several decorating partnerships. Tiffany joined forces with the American painter Samuel Colman, who suggested colors and patterns for walls and ceilings. Lockwood de Forest, an artist and collector of Indian artifacts, provided carved woodwork and furniture. Candace Wheeler created textiles and embroidery to Tiffany's designs. Tiffany, who specialized in glass, remained in charge of the overall design process. The firm enjoyed great success, counting among its clients such prominent figures as President Chester Arthur, pharmaceuticals millionaire George Kemp, elder statesman Hamilton Fish, president of the Metropolitan Museum John Taylor Johnston, author Mark Twain, and the Veterans of New York's Seventh Regiment Armory.

After 1883 Tiffany worked primarily on his own. In 1885 he completed work on his second home, in a massive McKim, Mead, and White-designed Romanesque revival building at Seventy-Second Street and Madison Avenue commissioned by his father. Tiffany's top floor studio was perhaps the most startling room. With its theatrical and cave-like appearance, unique four-sided central fireplace, and forest of glass lanterns of various shapes and colors suspended from the ceiling, it was described as "a dream: Arabian Nights in New York." Tiffany continued to work on residential, public, and ecclesiastical interiors to a far greater extent than many have assumed. One of the most remarkable commissions was for the home of two of his most important patrons, Louisine and Henry Osborne Havemeyer. Their house at 1 East Sixty-Sixth Street, completed in 1892, was replete with glowing iridescent glass-mosaic walls, lighting fixtures of Near Eastern derivation, elaborate filigreed balustrades and fireplace screens, and a dramatic suspended staircase. Tiffany was responsible for every decorative element, enhancing the unified effect.

His artisans and designers mastered the techniques needed to produce and decorate objects in metal, wood , glass, fabric, and wallpaper and became manufacturers of rugs, glass mosaics, lighting fixtures, and ornamental cast bronzes. Tiffany's creativity peaked as Art Nouveau burst on the scene in Europe in the mid-1890s. The primary proponent of Art Nouveau in America, Tiffany's work exemplified the movement's aims to develop a new aesthetic based in nature. While the French and Belgian Art Nouveau artists abstracted nature into sinuous curves, and the Viennese and Scottish experimented with geometric abstraction, Tiffany sought to depict the colors and forms of nature in a more straightforward, impressionistic manner. His lily lamps follow nature's logic, with petals and leaves on the shade and stems, and stalks on the base, while his "Agate" and "Lava" glass vases closely approximate the appearance of other natural materials. Far from resulting in a simplified version of Art Nouveau themes, however, Tiffany's glass is invariably complex in composition and appearance.

What began as formal interpretations of nature grew into a love of lush naturalism, and as his artistic career progressed, he became increasingly preoccupied by illusionistic depictions of landscapes and flowers. His was not an intellectual approach to art; rather it was a sensory one, providing feasts of color, light, and texture. Post-Civil War prosperity produced patrons who were not merely rich but also cultured and who shared an aptitude for experimentation. They were poised for Tiffany, who coupled his artistic ambitions with a unique marketing ability that enabled him to publicize his wares to an extent formerly unknown in America. Tiffany utilized the great international fairs of the late nineteenth century as promotional vehicles for his artistic work. He first exhibited his oil paintings at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia and later at the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris. It was the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, however, that was a watershed event in Tiffany's career. Over a million people visited his exhibit, which was the subject of numerous accounts in the press and the catalyst for many new commissions.

During that period the Parisian dealer Siegfried Bing saw Tiffany's work, and his assessment of it led to his sponsorship of Tiffany in Paris and throughout Europe. Tiffany continued to make strong showings and receive awards at international fairs, notably Paris in 1900, Buffalo in 1901, Turin in 1902, and St. Louis in 1904. As a result, his work was widely known and acclaimed throughout America and around the world. Early institutional collectors of Tiffany glass included the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, Tokyo's Imperial Museum, and many other museums around the world. His stained glass windows can still be found in many of America's oldest colleges and universities, among them Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Brown, Vassar and Wellesley, as well as the Smithsonian and the Chicago Art Institute. While Tiffany Studios primarily manufactured glass for lamps, vases and windows, it also produced objects in copper and bronze collectively called "Fancy Goods" in his catalogues. Also inspired by nature, his metalwork designs were used for candelabras, desk sets, picture frames, and other objects, and often incorporated glass elements.

When Tiffany took over as vice president and artistic director of Tiffany & Co. after his father's death in 1902, Tiffany Studios also began producing jewelry, primarily using semiprecious stones and enamels, and retaining the Studios' primary motifs of plants and insects. An autocratic perfectionist, Tiffany was known to walk down the production lines with his cane and strike any piece that he found unacceptable. And yet, he always had an eye on the bottom line and would cease production of any item that went unsold for one year. Shortly after the First World War, tastes shifted dramatically away from Art Nouveau and toward the sparer Bauhaus aesthetic. With the concomitant loss of revenue, as well as the decline in fortune due to Tiffany's lifestyle and his Foundation, Tiffany Studios declared bankruptcy in 1932. Louis Comfort Tiffany died on January 17, 1933 in New York, in relative obscurity. It was not until the late 1950's that scholars and collectors began rediscovering Tiffany's work, and jumpstarted the process of resurrecting his reputation as an artist, innovator, and pioneer of modernism as he is now known today. Related items: Louis C.

Tiffany, Noted Artist, Dies Louis C. Tiffany, Noted Artist, Dies By THE NEW YORK TIMES Louis Comfort Tiffany, artist and philanthropist, president of the Tiffany Studios, 46 West Twenty-third Street, and son of the founder of Tiffany & Co., jewelers, of which he was, himself, a vice president and director, died at 6:45 o'clock last night at his residence, 27 East Seventy- second Street, an apartment house which he designed. He had been ill for ten days with pneumonia. He was 84 years old. Surviving are a son, Charles L. Tiffany, and four daughters, Mrs. Graham Lusk, Mrs. Rodman Gilder, Mrs. Frank Weld, all of this city, and Mrs. Dorothy T. Burlingham of Vienna. The funeral service will be held privately at the convenience of the family. Louis Comfort Tiffany was among the best known of American artists. He was born in New York on Feb. 18, 1848, a son of Charles Lewis Tiffany, the jeweler, and Mrs. Harriet Olivia Young Tiffany.

He studied art under George Inness and Samuel Coleman in New York and under Leon Bailly in Paris. Yale University conferred an honorary A. M. degree on him in 1903. Mr. Tiffany's paintings in oils and water-colors were chiefly of Oriental scenes. He also executed decorative work and is best known for his work in glass. He devised new formulas for decorative designs in this medium know as "Tiffany Favrile glass." It was produced by the Tiffany Studios, of which he was president and art director. Mr. Tiffany also was vice president and director of Tiffany & Co., jewelers, and vice president and director of Tiffany & Co. Safe Deposit Company. Honors Won at Expositions A gold medal was awarded to him and he was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in Paris in 1900. In 1893, at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, he received fifty-four medals. Other honors included the grand prix at the Paris Exposition in 1900 and at St.

Petersburg the next year; gold medal, Buffalo Exposition in 1901 and the Dresden Exposition the same year; grand prix and special diploma at the Turin Exposition in 1902; gold medal at the St. Louis Exposition in 1904 and the Jamestown Exposition in 1907; grand prize at the Seattle Exposition in 1909, and gold medal at the Panama Exposition in 1915 and at the Sesquicentennial Exposition at Philadelphia in 1926. He was a member of the Century Club, American Water Color Society, New York Society of Fine Arts, Architectural League, Imperial Society of Fine Arts of Tokyo, Japan, and the Societe National des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 1919 he established the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation for art students at Oyster Bay and deeded to it his entire collection of paintings, glass and other art objects, together with a fund of $1,000,000, the income from which is used to maintain the institution. Its purposes, as outlined by Mr.

Tiffany, are "art education, directed both to art appreciation and production within the scope of the industrial as well as the fine arts, and, as one means toward these educational purposes, the establishment and maintenance of a museum to contain objects of art." Mr. Tiffany gave his Oyster Bay home, Laurelton Hall, to the foundation, together with eighty acres of land. He built studios and luxurious living quarters and every Summer invited fifty artist, from all parts of the country to work there at his expense. The twelfth annual exhibit of the work of members of the foundation at the American-Anderson Galleries represented the work of more than 300 artists. The 500 pieces exhibited included paintings, sculpture, lithographs, metal work and jewelry. His Art Much Discussed Mr. Tiffany was reckoned as one of the first exponents of modern art in the United States. His own painting, architectural designs and glass brought about much discussion. When recognition came to him, however, it was overwhelming. During his later years he leaned rather toward the conservative in art, although he was greatly interested in the work of all members of the foundation, however modern. His own home anticipated by twenty years the modern trend in furniture.

He had designed the house, grounds, furniture, carpets, textiles, silver and china. There are studios for painting and sculpture and workshops for metal jewelry design, all connected with the house by a long, glass- covered passageway. He lived there alone, except for servants and two trained nurses. Mr. Tiffany married Miss Mary Woodbridge Goddard on May 15, 1872. Two years after her death in 1884 he married Miss Louise Wakeman Knox, a daughter of the Rev. J. H. Mason Knox of Philadelphia, who died several years ago. On Jan. 8, 1931, in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of his election to the National Academy of Design, members of the council of the organization called on him at his home to present to him an illuminated parchment extolling his services to art. Cass Gilbert, president of the academy, headed the delegation. On the parchment was inscribed: "The officers and council of the National Academy of Design send greetings to our fellow- member, Louis Comfort Tiffany, and congratulate him on his fifty years as an academician.

During this time, inspired by a vision of the future, his creative genius has opened new fields, added greater beauty to the world of art and brought much honor to his profession. "It also desires to express its appreciation for his help and encouragement to many workers in the arts who have taken advantage of his splendid generosity in founding the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation." Louis Comfort Tiffany collection and more at the Morse Museum Follow Us on Instagram Collection The work of Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848–1933) is undoubtedly the centerpiece of the Morse Museum collection. The Museum’s Tiffany collection is broad, deep, and unique. It includes fine examples in every medium Tiffany explored, in every series of work he produced, and from every period of his life. The collection has been referred to as “the most comprehensive and most interesting collection of Tiffany anywhere” by Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, Anthony W. and Lulu C. Wang Curator of American Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

In her book The Art of Louis Tiffany, Vivienne Couldrey described the Morse’s holdings as “the most important collection of Tiffany material in the world today.” Among the most fascinating objects in the Museum’s Tiffany collection are the brilliantly colored windows, mosaics, marble, jewels, glass, stone, and furnishings that make up the chapel interior Tiffany created for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago It was Tiffany’s work at this exposition, and most especially the chapel, that clearly established him internationally as one of the leading artists/designers of his era. The Museum’s Tiffany collection also includes a large number of pieces originally housed at Tiffany’s Long Island country estate, Laurelton Hall . Handpicked by Tiffany to be displayed there, this important group distinguishes the Morse’s collection from any other. The Laurelton Hall materials include the artist’s most prized paintings, art glass, pottery, and furniture as well as windows, lamps, and other objects that made their debut at international expositions and later adorned his home. The variety of the Morse’s Tiffany holdings range from his famed leaded-glass windows and lamps to the glass buttons his firm fashioned to make even life’s most humble objects expressions of beauty.

The collection in addition includes examples that define him as a painter, decorator, architect, photographer, and landscape architect, as well as a designer of ceramics, furniture, enamels, jewelry, and mosaics. Its breadth encompasses not only masterpieces such as the 1893 chapel that he designed personally but the works that he supervised and controlled after he created his studio operation and established its great popular success. Because of Tiffany’s deep personal involvement, Tiffany Studios was able to produce high-quality objects in a great variety of designs and materials over an extended period of time. The Museum’s Tiffany collection is additionally well supported by unique historical artifacts and archival material that shed light on Louis Comfort Tiffany, the man, his art, and his times. These materials include Tiffany’s personal memorabilia, letters, designs, plans, photographs, early experiments, business documents, ephemera, and architectural fragments from Laurelton Hall and Tiffany’s various homes in New York City. The Other Collections Although internationally renowned for its unique, visually magnificent, and historically invaluable Tiffany collection, the Morse is more than a Tiffany museum.

It is also a treasure house of American decorative art from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century, with especially rich holdings in the area known as Arts and Crafts . American Decorative Art and Sculpture Of particular interest is the Morse’s extensive American art pottery collection, which now numbers over 800 examples, including almost 500 Rookwood pieces. The Arts and Crafts movement sought to give America-which had been overrun with badly designed and poorly made mass-produced products-a new world of handcrafted beauty. The Arts and Crafts group also includes works by Gustav Stickley, the Roycrofters, and others. In addition, the Museum’s collection contains American leaded-glass windows by Tiffany contemporaries such as Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, John La Farge, and Arthur Nash. The sculpture collection includes works by Thomas Crawford, Hiram Powers, Daniel Chester French, John Rogers, and others. Painting and Graphic Arts Highlights of the Museum’s painting collection include works by Samuel F.B.

Morse (a relative of Charles Hosmer Morse ), Thomas Doughty, George Inness, John Singer Sargent, Rembrandt Peale, Cecilia Beaux, Martin Johnson Heade, Maxfield Parrish, Arthur B. Davies, Herman Herzog, Thomas Hart Benton, Samuel Colman, and others. The Museum’s prints include works by some of the same artists as well as by Grant Wood, Mary Cassatt, Paul CÃ©zanne, Childe Hassam, John Steuart Curry, and Edward Hopper. European and Miscellaneous Collections The collection of American decorative art is supplemented by contemporaneous European examples of glass and ceramics. Works by European artists such as William Morris, as well as examples of 15th- and 16th-century stained glass, provide context to our leaded-glass holdings. Other European works in the collection include glass, jewelry, ceramics, and metalwork by Emile GallÃ©, RenÃ© Lalique, and Carl FabergÃ©, plus examples of furniture by GallÃ© and Louis Majorelle. The Morse’s holdings further extend to diverse objects that are of interest because of their relevance to other groups in the Museum’s possession.

These collections, ranging from1850 to 1990, include carnival glass, metalwork, textiles, and costumes. Finally, the Morse maintains a collection of outdoor commercial signs of modern American design from Central Florida. Madonna and Child window, c. 1890 Exhibited: Worldâs Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893 Leaded glass Tiffany Glass Company, New York, 1885â92 (74-018) Shade No. 1495, Dragonfly & Water design, blue, cone shape Standard No 363, Pod design, Cushion base Leaded glass, bronze Tiffany Studios, New York City, 1902–32 Designer: Clara Driscoll, American 1861–1944 Marks on shade: TIFFANY STUDIOS / NEW YORK Marks on base: TIFFANY STUDIOS N.Y.

/ 363 (69-004) Rookwood Pottery, Cincinnati, 1880–1967 Decorator: Charles (Carl) Schmidt, 1875–1959 Marks: [conjoined RP surmounted by flames] / III / 904 / B / W / [conjoined CS] (PO-005-92) Art Lesson: Creating a Fused Glass Landscape Creating a Fused Glass Landscape Lesson Submitted by: Anna Mayehofer, West Genesee Middle School, Camillus, NY Unit: Crafts – Glass – Fusing Alternate Lesson: Fused Glass Frame A. Lesson Plan: Eighth Grade Fused Glass Design B. Objectives The students will be able to: Recognize the work of several artists who used the landscape/nature as the subject in their art work. Define landscape and relevant vocabulary terms such as fore, middle and background and illusions that can create depth. Recognize the landscape theme in the art work of Louis Comfort Tiffany. Become familiar with the work of Dale Chihuly and Frank L. Wright and the influence of nature within their artwork.

Create a full fused glass plate/bowl using the landscape/nature as a subject matter. Become familiar with glass terms and techniques that can be applied to fusing glass. Use the elements of design placing emphasis on line, color and texture in the creation of the glass design. C. Relationship to New York State Standards A. Creating, Performing, and Participating in the Arts Students will actively create a fused glass art work... B. Knowing and Using Arts Materials and Resources Students will be knowledgeable of the material used, as well as use selected material to enhance this project. Identification and use of glass techniques will be accomplished during this project. C. Responding to and Analyzing Works of Art Websites, prints will be made available to study/critique using past and contemporary glass design through the methods of inquiry presented by Feldman which places emphasis on the elements of design and previous knowledge. D. Understanding the Cultural Dimensions and Contribution of the Arts Influence art and current trends in the creation of three-dimensional design D. Materials Corning Museum of Glass History of Glass (Archive) Frank L. Wright . Also see a school designed by his son, John Lloyd Wright. Note the treatment of the glass for the windows. H.

Procedure Students will need to use visual resources such as slides, internet sites, videos, prints, etc. in learning about the great landscape artists. These artists can vary-they can be Louis Comfort Tiffany windows, Hudson River artists, or any artist/school you may wish to select or period to create a landscape. These can include cityscapes, seascapes, etc. A) Need to do rough draft of a landscape within format selected for the landscape composition. This may be irregular or geometric. B) Decide on a shape in which the landscape will be placed. This could be a free form, circular, rectangular, square, triangular or oval type shape. C) This glass shape must be cut first, then grind glass to smooth edges. D) Begin selection of glass which utilizes the same textures as the student has drawn in the rough draft. E) Students need to become knowledgeable of names and textures of the glass used on their landscape plate. F) Glass needs to be ground to smooth edges using a grinder and safety rules must be strictly enforced/use of goggles and a protective shield over the grinder G) Wash and then dry pieces of glass. H) Using white glue (not copious amounts) to slightly tack the glass pieces onto the glass shape/plate.

Once the appropriate colors and textures have been selected and tack glued let dry overnight. Place on kiln washed shelf. Place glass on a mold (this can be student made form or a commercially made form. Fire the glass (1453 degrees Fahrenheit) for 12 minutes,/flash vent to 900 and then close lid and turn kiln to 900 degrees for one hour and turn off kiln... leaving the lid closed. Let the glass anneal overnight and don’t open until it is about 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Then you are ready to place the plate in a mold that has kiln wash applied to it. The kiln wash can be applied with a brush or spray bottle. Fire again using same procedure as with the tack fusing but once it has been flash vented be sure to keep the kiln at 900 degrees for another 3 hours. Then leave glass in kiln until the temperature falls to 100 degrees or less. Remove from kiln. If there is some kiln wash on the plate be sure remove use Windex. It seems to come off easiest with this product and a toothbrush. The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Visit Us Today!

Art History Louis C. Tiffany A master of many media, Louis Comfort Tiffany (American, 18481933) was one of Americas most noted decorative artists at the turn of the twentieth century. Louis C. Tiffany began his career as a painter but moved quickly to interior decoration and leaded-glass windows, creating revolutionary types of opalescent glass that radiated especially deep, vibrant hues. Using variations in color and thickness of glass, he achieved pictorial effects of unsurpassed subtlety and beauty. In addition to stained-glass windows and lighting fixtures, his studios also made pottery, furniture, textiles, jewelry, and works in bronze and enamel. In the early 1890s, Louis Comfort Tiffany developed a method of blending different colors together in glass while it was in a molten state, thus achieving subtle effects of shading and texture. He called this type of glass, which was often noted for its iridescence, Favrile glass (from fabrile, an Old English word meaning hand- wrought).

Description The Museum’s elegant scarf is based on a stunning window panel by master decorative artist Louis Comfort Tiffany (American, 18481933). The window panel, now in the Museums American Wing, features jewel- like clusters of grapes on trailing vines silhouetted against a distant sky. Textured glass lends a three-dimensional quality and a dazzling iridescence to the grapes. Our lightweight scarf evokes the richness and delicacy of the original panel. Silk crêpe de chine. Imported. 63” x 18”. Louis Comfort Tiffany - World's Most Comprehensive Collection Louis Comfort Tiffany Follow Us on Instagram Louis Comfort Tiffany Louis Comfort Tiffany, one of the most creative and prolific designers of the late 19th-century, declared that his life-long goal was “the pursuit of beauty.” With its comprehensive assemblage of Tiffany’s work, the Morse Museum’s collection uniquely documents that quest. Although his father, Charles Lewis, had founded the most prestigious silver and jewelry company in America, Louis chose another professional direction. Originally trained as a painter, he began studying the chemistry and techniques of glassmaking when he was 24.

He developed this interest as a partner in the firm of Louis C. Tiffany and Company, Associated Artists (1881–83) provided innovative interior decoration for clients ranging from Mark Twain in Hartford, Connecticut to President Chester Arthur at the White House. A New Method of Glassmaking In 1885, Tiffany established his own firm and while he continued to undertake decorating commissions, his focus was on new methods of glass manufacture . Four years earlier he registered a patent for opalescent window glass, a radical new treatment whereby several colors were combined and manipulated to create an unprecedented range of hues and three-dimensional effects. Tiffany believed that this new material allowed more fidelity to the inherent nature of the medium, because it enabled form to be defined by the glass itself rather than by painting onto the glass. Opalescent glass, however, was firmly rejected by the other important school of the stained glass revival, which advocated the Gothic tradition of painting with enamel on clear, uniformly colored “antique” glass.

The passionate moral dimension of late 19th-century taste is clearly seen in Boston glassmaker Charles Connick’s declaration that his firm’s greatest contribution to stained glass was “rescuing it from the abysmal depth of opalescent picture windows.” Those, like Connick, who followed the medieval precedent of painting on clear glass, were in bitter opposition to Tiffany and to John La Farge, the artist who had developed opalescent glass about the same time as Tiffany, and was his chief competitor. Both schools thought that they alone were being "truthful," an ideal central to the philosophy of the Arts and Crafts movement . Equally important was the goal of design unity. First manifested in his efforts to create complete interiors, Tiffany’s commitment to unity was extended to the design and manufacture of stained glass. The leading necessary to hold the pieces of glass together became a fully integrated design element, simulating, for example, the stems of plants. Tiffany was convinced the actual production of a stained-glass window required the artist’s involvement at every stage, even in a factory setting—from creating the first sketches to overseeing how the glass was selected, cut, and assembled.

Inspired By Nature Tiffany’s aesthetic was based on his conviction that nature should be the primary source of design inspiration. Intoxicated by color, he translated into glass the lush palette found in flowers and plants. This fascination with nature and with extending the capabilities of the medium led to the exploration of another technique—in 1893 Tiffany introduced his first blown-glass vases and bowls, called “Favrile.” The name, he declared, was taken from an old English word for hand made. Favrile glass quickly gained international renown for its surface iridescence and brilliant colors. International Acclaim Tiffany was among the first American designers to be acclaimed abroad. Favrile glass, together with stained-glass windows such as the Four Seasons, was shown at world’s fairs and sold in galleries like Siegfried Bing’s L’Art Nouveau, which served as a conduit for the most innovative design at the turn of the century. In the United States, Tiffany continued to execute special commissions for stained glass and glass mosaics. Much of this work was for churches, whose patronage Tiffany often put at risk because of his strong preference for landscapes instead of traditional religious figural scenes.

He also expanded his more commercial activities and established a metalwork department, producing lamps, desk sets, and chandeliers that were sold in the thousands through his own New York showroom, company catalogues and department stores. More personalized expressions continued as well: In 1898 Tiffany began experimenting with enamels, in 1900 with a line of pottery, and by 1904 with designs for jewelry. While glass is the most significant medium in which Tiffany worked, he designed, fabricated, or sold everything that made up an interior, including furniture, textiles, and wall coverings. A desire to create a unified artistic expression culminated in the last house he designed in its entirety—his own. Laurelton Hall , in Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, was completed in 1904. The Morse Museum is the greatest repository of Tiffany furniture, stained glass, mosaic work, and architectural elements from this masterpiece. Dumbfounding Versatility Tiffany’s work reflects the efforts to resolve the conflicting ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement.

William Morris, its English protagonist, had demanded: "What business have we with art at all unless all can share it?" Yet most companies could not produce affordable art for the home while retaining high standards and individual expression. Tiffany, however, successfully created an art industry. He triumphed where others had failed because his personal fortune allowed him to sacrifice company profits in the interests of artistic achievement. In addition, he provided an extraordinary range of products, so that consumers at almost every economic level had access to his religion of beauty. The visitor to the Morse Museum is invited to examine what a critic in 1900 called Tiffany’s “dumbfounding versatility”—from the lamps that were made in the thousands to the unique windows executed for special commissions or for the artist’s own use. Louis Comfort Tiffany, c. 1920s Photo by Blank & Stoller Gift of Mrs. Benjamin Hosking (67-035) Tiffany Studios, New York City, 1902–32 (65-028) Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company, New York City, 1892–1900 Marks: Louis C.

Tiffany R4017 (57-005) Tiffany Lamps - Tiffany Style Lamps - Floor - Table - Chandeliers - Tiffany Lamp Store Rustic Lodge Rustic Lodge lighting includes pinecones, bears, fish and moose - everything for decorating your lodge or cabin in the woods. The name Tiffany has long been associated with quality and jewelry. Tiffany and Company is one of the largest and most renowned jewelry companies in the world. From the founders of this company, the Tiffany family, came Louis Comfort Tiffany. Born in New York in 1848, he was the son of Charles Tiffany, the founder of Tiffany and Company, the highly respected jewelery company. Louis Tiffany was remarkably talented and creative and made an indelible mark on the art community by designing stained glass windows, lamps, and other fine decorative jewelry. Louis Tiffany's lamps have been exhibited and sold worldwide. Louis was as successful a businessman as he was an artist. In 1902 he was named the First Design Director of Tiffany and Company.

Being a highly innovative and creative man, Louis Tiffany came up with the idea of gathering together the bits and pieces of discarded glass thrown off in the production of stained glass windows and using these pieces to form unique and beautiful decorative lamps. So beautiful and unique were his lamp creations that they became known as Tiffany Lamps. Today you can still decorate your home with a vast array of Tiffany Lamps including chandeliers, floor lamps, table lamps and more, all created with that beautiful and unique style you can only find in genuine Tiffany Lamps. dba theTiffanyLampStore.com 1004 22nd Street Barling, Arkansas 72923

Question: What was the middle name of the decorative artist Louis Tiffany?
Answer: COMFORT